Independent Investigative Journalism and Commentary from New Orleans, LA

Monday, August 23, 2010

Cedric and Ike's greatest hits, Vol. 1

I was wrong. I admit it. I had a very important fact dead wrong about Cedric Richmond, Ike Spears, 5437 Crowder Blvd., NOCE and NOCAP......Grateful Realty did not own the property from 2000 to 2004 while the non-profits were housed there.

A company called Crowder Development Corporation, LLC owned the property. And guess who owns Crowder Development?

Un-fucking-believable.

Spears formed the company in August of 2000. He then purchased 5437 Crowder from Northstar Properties for 180k in September of 2000. It would appear he incorporated this company for the sole purpose of housing NOCE, NOCAP and Cedric's office. After the non-profits imploded and the LSED grant money dried up, he sold the building to Grateful Realty for 220k in February of 2005....the building had served it's purpose and a nearly a million dollars (that I can account for) had been run through it in non-profit funds...including a NOCE line item for 60k in renovations to the property. I had a friend call the current owner of the building who is selling it and ask them if they had done any renovations on the building....she said no..no renovations have been done in at least over 10 years.

NOCAP did receive grant money from the LSED as well as NOCE. I could only find one NOCAP grant for 15k:

NOCAP was running at around the same budget as NOCE ....200k. The grant proposal did not have an audit of the company so I have no way of finding out where they were getting the bulk of their funding.

Get this....as I pointed out before the LSED grants specify that you cannot have a non-profit perform duplicate services in the same area:

Well not only were NOCAP and NOCE the exact same service, they even told the LSED that they were going to use NOCE's "experts":

Now keep in mind that NOCE was only paying one person a little over 4k/year to be the computer expert. So far I have only accounted for 3 computers between the two non-profits and only one computer teacher. They are asking for 1000 dollars in this grant to buy computers. You have a company running at 200k/year to teach computer skills and "bridge the digital divide" and they are buying $1000 in computers.

That's pretty amazing...was anybody even reading these grant requests or were they just stroking the checks?

Notice that for the grant, Spears listed the NOCAP address at 1555 Poydras Street...I think that is his law office. Also notice that on the bottom of some of these documents you see Spears and Spears upside down....that means the documents were faxed from his law office. Interesting how he failed to list NOCAP's real address as 5437 Crowder....this was two years after they had already housed the non-profit there and they even put up the damn sign outside:

This is a classic Jefferson scam....classic....textbook. Cedric Richmond is a crook, we already knew Ike Spears was but now we know Richmond's true nature as well.

I have accounted for over 50 LSED grant requests from Richmond totaling in the millions. I would say a little over half those requests and money went to churches who had similar mission statements...bridging the digital divide, teaching kids to pass the leap, developing "life skills" for kids, etc. Non-profits with names like A Blessing in a Blessing, inc, Put God First Community Development Corp., Stars Over the East Television Program, New Life Community Development Corp., Doing Good in the Hood, LLC, Franklin Ave. Baptist Church, Roy Ave. Baptist church ($55,000), On Giant Shoulders, inc......the list goes on.

I'm not suggesting all these organizations were bogus, I'm sure many of them produced great results. I'm just stating that it seems the LSED was stroking checks at Richmond's behest without care nor clue as to what the money was going to or if it could be accounted for. The NOCAP proposal even stated they were tapping another LSED grantee for services, NOCE, which is a clear violation of the grant requirements. Was anyone reading this stuff or did they just stroke the checks every time Richmond told them to?

You know, I have to ask....do other cities dole out cash to churches? Millions of dollars from the Hotel/Motel taxes being stroked out to any church who can fill out an application and is in the favor of Cedric Richmond or another state legislator?

Here was one of my favorite question responses:

Nice....repeat the answer back in the form of the question and get 30k.

Bottom line...Richmond and Spears were running a Jefferson non-profit scam out of 5437 Crowder. There is money missing from the entities which can't be accounted for, including 60k via NOCE to renovate Ike Spears property. I believe Richmond was fleecing that non-profit through a credit card and by proxy through the Executive Director he was romantically involved with. I believe when the non-profit auditor/accountant found the irregularities, Richmond had the woman take the fall and possibly paid her to keep the matter quiet.

This guy is bad news....bad fucking news.

Speaking of "bad news"... I still can't believe no one in the MSM has had the balls to call him out on this stuff.

22 comments:

HOLY COW the same Pearlie Elloie who teamed up with Vernon Shorty and a few others who stole over $3,500,000.00 dollars (3.5 million dollars) from HUD and the City of New Orleans in the scam now known as the Desire Community Housing Corporation????

Well well well I had hoped she drowned a violent death during Katrina but unfortunately it appears she is back on the non-profit "For-Own Profit" scam ring again.

WHERE IS THE TIMES PICAYUNE? WWL--everyone is abandoning the BELO ship so they are excused? WGNO? WDSU and their illustrious I-Team? FOX-8--I'll give Lee, Shabad, and Val a break here!!, where is New Orleans City Business? or better yet where the FUCK is Clancy Dubois who backs these assholes in every election?

BTW Ike Spears made out like a bandit with Desire Community Housing Corp and the beautufil apartment building on Chef Highway we as tax payers sunk $3.5 million into.

Want a tip? And no, I won't corroborate it because its obviousness corroborates itself.

This information, and the resulting news frenzy it would produce, is being suppressed by the highest levels of influence.

Local politicos, especially ones who everyone considers unimpeachably clean, are about to jump on the C-Richmond band wagon. They DO NOT want this to devolve into Bill Jefferson 2.0

Second pressure point? African American leaders that are scared to death they're about to have their last clean shot at the easiest VRA district in America to win snatched away from them by fate. It's not their fault that C-Richmond has been holding his place in line while lining his pockets. But they're scared that his downfall will doom them. Re-alignment will destroy this seat. It'll be whiter, more republican, less NOLA centric, and harder to win.

This is a dangerous precipice you stand at, Zombie. It's the right thing to do, white or black, but it puts a tremendous amount at stake for a lot of people that have had their influence diluted or almost destroyed.

I stand in truth, if TPTB can't face it they are weak fools one and all. I consider myself a democrat and I can honestly tell you that I have never once pulled a lever for a republican candidate...I hav refrained from voting more than once because I could not bring myself to vote for the democratic candidate at hand.

However partisanship is redundant to me when corruption is at hand. This city is overrun with theives stealing money "in the name of children". If the democratic party is stupid enough to send this guy to the big show and let him run amok that's there decision, but I'm goi g to stay on him like stink on shit until he answers to his transgressions. Elections And racial alliances be damned, we have stop the Mefferts, the Nagins, the Richmonds in their tracks or this city and it's children will pay the price.

Yeah, I think busting Cedric Richmond is definitely the Lord's work on this one, and I am thrilled that this story, which has been half-known for a while, is coming out.

It pisses me off that LaFonta is the beneficiary here, though.

The pot is trash talking about the kettle.

Some of the people involved in this big push for LaFonta have been involved for a couple of years, getting elected to Democratic party offices in this district back in 2008, and they areevil.

I say "evil", because the same thing that pisses everyone off about Richmond, the way he fucked over the children here, and maybe also how he fucked over a woman and left her dealing with all the consequences of everyone's actions, is the MO of these LaFonta assholes, too.

I asked the woman in question if I could start talking, and she told me to shut up.

She thinks it will hurt her child if I say what this man did to her and to the little girl.

She told me she does not know if LaFonta knows, or if Deborah Langoff, who endorsed the criminal for this public office, knows.

They probably do, and others involved in that campaign definitely do.

They made a calculation that it would never come out, and everyone in politics knows that if there is no punishment, there is no crime.

These LaFonta people campaigned for Jefferson as a favor to Nagin, and they are in a position to help leak shit to you, Zombie, because they knew about this before Katrina hit.

Good work slamming Richmond, but if LaFonta benefits, you may as well have stayed home. Evil wins either way.

Question is, which cowardly old media lion will try this on for size first? They'll have to credit the zombie, and that takes the fun out of it. They'll have to take a huge pile of shit from people who don't want Cedric to go down (i.e. everyone who sees this as our last best hope to elect an AfAm rep).

Lee Zurik is the name that will come up, but he's a little too enterprising to try to take down someone like Cedric. This racial charge over the investigation will scare him away...

What about the conservative TP? No, they'll end up endorsing Cedric... Or will they?

And here's a TIP, anon up there: MITCH LANDRIEU WILL ENDORSE CEDRIC IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE. Maybe even tomorrow, but likely by the end of the week. Try that on for size, you good gov Landrieu-lovers..

- "I asked the woman in question if I could start talking, and she told me to shut up.

She thinks it will hurt her child if I say what this man did to her and to the little girl."

If she truly cared about her little girl and her future in this city she would come forward with what we already know happened. This is a time bomb waiting to explode in a Washington, D.C. hotel room and when it does he will embarrass this state and the DNC in a way Bill Jefferson wouldn't dream of.

Just unbelievable. We are damn lucky to have one of the only good republicans holding this seat, because this crook Cedric Richmond is going down on this one. I am with you dambala, but I may just have to pull the lever for Joseph Cao this time around.

As far as Mitch goes, I wish he would have won in 2006, I voted for him then and in the most recent election, and I expect that he will improve this city greatly. That said, politics makes strange bedfellows and shortly before/after Ed Murray dropped out in the race, I saw Mitch meeting with Ike Spears in his office (adjacent to the UPS store) on Elysian Fields.

so now both the Mayor and the DA are asking 'us' to jon the Law Enforcement community to support Richmond (just heard the radio spot. Guess this investigation will get no press or light of day unless the feds jump in.

Sick but Justice will never be served now any of these alleged rape accusations because the politicians of power already endorsed this scumbag and they don't want their endorsement to scar their reputations.

Sadly this small "boy" (I call him a "boy" because NO man would ever do these things to women) will get caught doing the same thing in D.C. when he is elected to another woman which will really embarass the state of Louisiana and New Orleans even more.

Dambala, it is easy to say "if the woman truly cared about her little girl and the future in the city she would come forward".

I agree with you up to a point. Yes, that is the best thing to do. I love you for the way you walk that talk, and because you keep doing so even when you are taunted or threatened.

But go talk to anyone who has ever worked in a women's shelter about what often happens if someone with a 'domestic' issue tries to take on a man with more power and money than she's got.

Most shelter workers will tell you to have the utmost respect for a woman's assessment of the risks she faces.

That isn't to say encourage her not to speak, just know that her understanding of the stakes, and of her personal capacity to cope with a given course of action, needs to be respected.

She needs to be listened to attentively, and helped to face the situation she is in.

There are a lot of people who might offer to help this woman you are talking about, the one Richmond appears to have hurt so badly, but for many of these potential helpers their primary objective would be to win political fights against the man who hurt her, not to help her, so she's right to be wary about accepting that kind of help.

She does not need to let herself be used.

If the people helping her are in the political game, they might abandon her if Richmond's friends offer them some sort of prize for bailing on her.

A shelter worker would tell you that if, once you've heard a woman's story and her analysis of things, you can offer practical supports to help with the specific issues she raises, you do that, on an issue by issue basis, and when you've helped her to get things covered, then she can do the next thing that should be done.

If her housing isn't stable, she should not be trying to fight connected politicians.

You can't throw a strong punch if your feet aren't stable, and you can't get out of the way of potential knockout blows, either. Survival needs come first.

It seems there is a lot going on with Richmond and women, and none of it good.

The original point I was making was that LaFonta's team contains someone who has badly hurt a woman and kid I care about, that is well known over there, and they don't give a shit.

I was talking about the LaFonta team member and the people covering for him when I said that in the story I knew about, there wasn't a rape.

Some wires got crossed in the responses; the people who wrote about Richmond saying "she liked it rough" to excuse an alleged sexual assault were talking about what Richmond, not the LaFonta friend, did to a woman.

The LaFonta point I'd make is that it frustrates me that the beneficiary of public outrage about harm done to kids and to women is going to be yet another set of politicians who harm women and kids.

It is maddening. I want to yell. I want to breach confidences and name names, because I agree with you that sunshine is good.

I don't know about Richmond's treatment of women or kids in his personal life.

Thanks to you, I've seen enough to know that professionally he is terrible.

I am sick of both Richmond and LaFonta.

Like the last poster said, as soon as powerful people endorse or sanction a man who in a normal setting might be facing prison, their reputations are tied to that guy, and they will protect his criminal ass as lovingly as they would protect their own.

This is happening in every political camp, and it is upsetting.

Maybe 'one asshole at a time' is the best that can be hoped. Let's see if your push can get Richmond out of the picture, and then it will be time to work on the next set of assholes.

Hey Dambala, I called in to Couhig's show (he was filling in for Eric Asher on 690 am) today. he was covering Cedric Richmond and I raised hell about how the ethics issue in light of $Bill's legacy in this seat needed to take front and center in all discussions in this campaign. I pointed out that Richmond had been DISBARRED for 6 months and then I highlighted that this info came from your site. Oh Couhig knew all about you of course and he seemed more concerned with the source than with discussing details. He then politely moved off my call and moved right directly on to Joe Cao for a live interview; Cao seemed to have caught the exchange and seemed bemused.

{sorry same anon} Just a follow-up: -->>> When I said 'same info' I meant that I referred Couhig (and hopefully Cao who seemed to have been listening) to your reports on the Richmond non-profit, not that I got the disbarment info from your site.